Sunday, November 4, 2012

City missing out on a lot of dough

City Comptroller John C. Liu announced that an audit of the city Department of Finance’s (DOF) collection of parking tickets discovered that the agency has failed to go after millions of dollars in fines owed by companies with delivery fleets, as the agency gave discounts on their tickets.

“It’s bad enough that people feel like they’re constantly blitzed with parking tickets,” Liu said. “It’s absolutely galling to now find that the city lets big companies off the hook on millions in parking tickets. At the minimum, the city should be as efficient collecting money from big companies as it is from residents and small business owners, who apparently never get a break.”

The DOF manages two programs that offer commercial fleets discounts on parking tickets. The NYC Delivery Solutions (Stipulated Fine) program covers companies that make quick deliveries or service calls, such as private mail couriers. The DOF’s Commercial Abatement Program enrolls commercial fleets that are not engaged in time-sensitive services, such as plumbing repair companies.

To enroll in the discount programs, companies first must pay all their outstanding tickets, waive their right to challenge future tickets, and agree to pay fines within 15 days. The DOF can remove any company that fails to abide by the agreement from the program and levy fines on them without the discount.

Liu’s audit found many companies that did not live up to the agreement and ignored large outstanding debts on their parking tickets without any penalty from the DOF.

Private citizens, whose vehicles can be towed or booted if they fail to contest or pay $350 in tickets within 100 days, were once able to obtain discounts on parking tickets. The DOF canceled this discount program for private citizens as of January.

That "deal" is not such a great deal anyway. Many fines are reduced from $115 to something like $90. And you waive your ability to contest violations, so violations that can be beat or incorrect summonses must now be paid for. 2007-2008 FedEx alone paid over $10 million. This DOES get passed on to the consumer.http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/14/when-a-fedex-truck-is-absolutely-positively-towed/

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